Drain Season

For the past week or two, every time I've taken a shower at my apartment the bathroom flooded. it would have been nice, sort of, if the problem was just the German girl's hair getting caught on the grill that covers the drain. Unfortunately, the unholy mess causing the drain to clog was below it, rotting.

This became a shallow pond every time I showered

I managed to catch the landlord yesterday during his conveniently brief office hours. I explained to him the drain problem, and the refrigerator problem (it doesn't close), and the radiator problem (it was on the highest temperature setting and the control knob was missing). He told me he was going to come up to my apartment at eleven o'clock yesterday to show me how to fix the clog myself and fix the other problems. I went back to my room and waited. At a quarter to twelve there was still no sign of him, so I went back down to his office and asked if he was still coming. "I did, I rang the doorbell and knocked and no one answered." I couldn't be so mad, my door was closed and is practically soundproof. But doesn't he have a key? And informed consent to enter the apartment? Whatever.

So the guy, who spoke in a tone a little more disgruntled than I would expect from someone who gets paid to deal with this shit, told me he would come back today at nine in the morning to fix the problems. I said OK, although I was actually pissed that he was forcing me to be up and waiting for a door buzzer at that time.

I set three alarms last night, so I was ready at nine, but after nearly an hour passed I went down to his office again. "Uh, so are you going to come up to my apartment?"

"Yes I have already come by once today and no one answered. I have wasted my time twice now." Jeez... I asked if he could come up again to actually do something and he said he would after he finished whatever complex administrative bullshit he was doing on his computer. It took another hour for him to come up to my apartment, but I had my door wide open and no music playing. I made sure I could hear him as soon as the elevator door opened.

He did arrive, finally, and wasn't nearly as surely as he was the last time I saw him. But his spirits may have been up because he knew something I didn't. After installing a new knob on the radiator in my room and telling me the refrigerator needed to be defrosted, he lead me to the bathroom. I had my own theories about how I would unclog the drain with the tools at my disposal (i.e. a flathead screwdriver and my hands), but I was hoping he was going to bring some fancy equipment or dangerous acids that would fix the problem as indirectly as possible.

As it turned out, all he brought was a flathead screwdriver and a pair of latex gloves. He did me the favor of unscrewing the grill to the drain, and took out an tube that looked like it might have been white when it was first installed, but was nearly completely covered in grey decomposing hair. The second he lifted the tube from the drain the bathroom took on the strange, sickening scent of brimstone that nearly made me gag. He lifted a small clump of hair from the tube and asked me for a plastic bag that he used to disposed of the ancient hair like he would fresh dog shit. He took off his glove with a smile and left the extra one for me. Teach a man to fish... right?

Yeah, I was scared too.